Behold the Bridegroom comes at midnight! Blessed is he who is found watching, and again unworthy is he who is found heedless. Beware, therefore, o my soul, that you not be shut out of the Kingdom.

The image of staring into the darkness in anticipation of the coming and Bright Day of Christ is very powerful. Looking at all the evil in the world it is easy to become despondent. How terrible it is to be paralyzed from doing good! Only by keeping hope in Christ is it possible to continue to labor … [Más]

People will come when worship is holy with a real respect for and sense of the sacred. Traditional worship engages all of the senses, you see holy images, hear reverent chanting and hymns, participate through physical actions united to prayers, smell incense and taste the divine. The worship itself is not just coming from thin air but is based on scriptures and what has been revealed as the worship in the Heavenly Liturgy at the throne of God. When what we do here is modeled after that it … [Más]

The world loves the pagan festival of Carnival, but God's people love Him. Though we have to live in this world lets not join them in evil and be like them, tell them how we have something better! We are God's people, there is no greater joy. We look forward to Lent not as misery but as a time of repentance and preparation for Pascha and the glorious day of Resurrection! The fruits of repentance are great joy!

This is just a distraction, the truth is simple and what the government is doing is indefensible. It is just a first step to curtail religious freedom. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion, when a religious institution is required to pay for "contraceptive services" that directly violate their religious convictions then that is a violation of that freedom. Don't give up the fight. They will say and do much worse.
Blessed are you when men hate you … [Más]

Jesus did not become God, He always was God, even before all ages. The council was summoned by the Emperor, who desired unity in the Roman Empire and thus called the Church's bishops together to settle the raging of the heresy of Arianism, the doctrine that Jesus Christ was a created being and therefore not truly the one God. This was a new idea, this council was not to establish a new faith but to affirm what was held to be true by the Apostles and to root out the false ideas that had spread … [Más]

Iraneus,
Thank you for your continued honest and sincere discussion. I too have a family of Catholic and Orthodox and sincerely pray hope unity comes for the coming generation. As far as it is helpful, I would like to continue.

There was another article also by Fr. Thomas Hopko that talks about the many issues between East and West that would have to be resolved before unity could be restored.
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/HopkoPope.php

A video that draws heavily from this article … [Más]

ACLumsden,

You said "...From conversations with Eastern Orthodox people, one in communion with Rome, the other not in communion with Rome, my impression is that of rigorous resistance to theological development as society progresses and so to, man's experiences of God. Hence the Orthodox Church's growing irrelevance to modern people."

The way I understand it, it is not a resistance to the idea of theological development, but rather the idea that theology can be altered or moved unilaterally. … [Más]

Ireneaus,
Thank you for clarifying your position. My apologies for taking offense. The reason I used examples beyond the chart was that the point was that the Roman Pontiff is not immune to heresy nor is any one Bishiporic. That is why it was always so important that the Church functioned as it was made to. The role of the papacy did change drastically in the middle ages. I had seen the Letter of Clement to be the Corinthians before but the language used is with a fraternal exhortation and does … [Más]

The Gregorian reforms of the 11th century signaled a radical departure in the Western Church from the Church of the Ecumenical Councils. The ancient collegial structure of Church government, which offered a common forum for churches both East and West to settle differences and thus provide a common bond, was to be replaced in the West by a Papal Monarchy, exercising an authoritarian, highly centralized form of Church government that ultimately controlled every aspect of Church life. Through its … [Más]

In regards to your chart:

St. Athanasius, was condemned by Pope Liberius though he was the leader of the defenders of orthodoxy against Arianism at the time. St. Athanasius told us that “Catholics faithful to Tradition” can be “reduced to a handful”. He wrote during the Arian crisis, when the global episcopacy defected to Arianism and Pope Liberius went into heresy, signed a heretical Arian creed and invalidly excommunicated St. Athanasius, as did the heretical bishops of the East.

“Even if … [Más]

Irenaus-

"I am not sure who Paul Owens is but I dont think he chooses his words carefully enough. He described the Trinity as three modes which is the heresy of Modalism. Catholics dont believe Trinity is represented by three modes. Perhaps he meant three relations/persons?"

I think that is what he meant too.

Right about Latin and Greek, for Orthodox the problem is that in John 15:26 Christ said He will send the Holy Spirit that proceeds from the Father. In the Greek this talks about origin, … [Más]

The great righteous man, Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, clearly and convincingly explains the parable of the ten virgins. Venerable Seraphim's basic thought lies in the understanding of the aim of Christian life as "the acquisition of the grace of the All-Holy Spirit", which he expressed in the remarkable conversation with the merchant, N. Motovilov.

Venerable Seraphim says to his converser: "In the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, when the foolish ones lacked oil, it was said: 'Go and … [Más]

In peace, let us pray to the Lord.

We pray for mercy, life, peace, health, salvation, and visitation for the servants of God who strive against the evil of abortion, and for the pardon and remission of their sins.

That He will not remember the transgressions of His people, but will turn away all His righteous wrath which He has stirred up against us, let us pray to the Lord.

That He will bless the good intentions of His servants who strive to rescue His children from violent death, and allow … [Más]

In an outstanding article on the Trinity written by Paul Owen, this distinction is well explained:
“First of all, mainstream Christians distinguish between the Trinitarian economy of God, and the Trinitarian ontology of God. What does that mean? These terms are an attempt to come to grips with two aspects of God’s relationship to the world: his otherness (transcendence), and his presence in the world (immanence). God is not, in his essence, a part of the space-time continuum which we might … [Más]

It reminds me also of the 60 minutes special on the Monastery on Mt. Athos.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7363712n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox

What I am "going on about" is that that style of worship that you see is something new that is not what was recieved through the tradition of the Church that the apostles and many centuries of Christians lived. It is a symptom of a culture that has lost touch with the notion of the sacred. The Catholic Mass is supposed to be sacred but as time goes on it is becoming less and less sacred and less and less Catholic. When the Church is afraid to talk about sin, when it is afraid to ask her members … [Más]

This video compares two different styles of worship, the American and the Orthodox. The contrasts are not just a result of differing theologies and cultural practices but an essential difference to the way these peoples relate to God and the essential questions they ask as to what salvation means.
In America people have an external freedom that is prison for their souls. The cardinal sin in our culture is to feel bad or to be unhappy. Therefore when one is sorrowful it is the sorrow itself that … [Más]